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Monday, 19 August 2013

The Same Question then, the Same Question now

As I blog this, I once again inculcate a potpourri of ramblings into what is supposedly my last resort for spiritual enlightenment – Disavowed. I don’t know from where this proclivity to express comes in me and neither do I know from where it comes in others who blog. But I do know that it comes from some inscrutable source and the very fact that it comes, demands respect and reconciliation. So here I am, yet again to let out an amalgamation of feelings and experiences which one with waning spirits might be a little bemused to ponder upon.

I never had the volition to retrograde my taste of music and neither do I want to have the pretence of superciliousness. However, yet I found it whimsical and somewhat pedantic when people heralded music from the 70’s and 80’s and bestowed it with legions or applauses. The word “classic” used to incessantly get appended whenever one talked of music from those times. My opinions, though, were pretty different. I considered those songs, and their supposed meanings to be pretty much of a platitude from those times. No real beats, no real awe inspiring rhythms and no real prowess. Yet they were heralded as pinnacles of mellifluousness. I held my opinion and used to argue with ones who had an inveterate lingering for these songs and suddenly, I find myself liking them like anything. How quickly things can change, I wonder !

Before I start narrating the reason behind this radical transformation, I’d like to refer to two previous blog posts of mine which shall serve as a pretext to what ensued. The blog posts are The Confessions of a Stalker Part I and Part II. So, as it turns out, my undulating tarrying for a girl which supposedly cannot be articulated verbatim, led me to another avenue. As I retrospect on my situation, I feel culpable of being driven by a desire far beyond the reach of my intellect. I convict myself of pulling myself in this preposterous situation where there is a one side communication struggling to make a prospective relationship tenable. And amidst this tribulation and brouhaha, came this retro song, which literally exonerated me.

The first time I listened to it was when I palpably wasn't having the privilege of operating the TV remote as someone else always had the possession of it. Retro songs have always been a favorite in my family and I’m often perceived a renegade for not following them. So on one fine day, this song from Satte Pe Satta started playing on a retro song show and I was initially compelled to look towards it partly because I had no other option and partly because I genuinely liked the delirium. “Pyaar hume kis mod pe le aaya” was followed by a section ending in a prolonged and lackadaisical “Haiiii”, and that’s precisely what captured my imagination. It took me no time to solicit the song and come to the conclusion that perhaps the song belonged in a time where one generation was handing over to the other invigorated generation and hence classical school was merging with the contemporary school. I liked the song but never developed the propensity to listen to it again. I did listen to its few opening lines when it came on TV or on the radio but now being in a position to get my willingness vested, I could have changed the channels. So it was 14 years later that I was once again forced to listen to listen to this song. No, not because I once again lost hold of the control of equipment, but because I was no longer in possession of my thoughts.

If you have read the prequels to this article in the aforementioned links, you’d be aware of my audacious yet intriguing indulgence in a mission. My situation has got exacerbated instead of getting palliated because the girl in the context has become more and more inaccessible, courtesy of her work commitments and her aversion to communicating with a lot of jocular people. Whatever the real reason be, she has been evasive for quite some time. No longer available for chats, no longer available on mobile and no longer available to her very friends who till now acted as faithful intermediaries. Total desolation and it means that either I invade her city and track down an umpteen number of her company offices to get to her or I shake hands with the devil to track her down via the use of some ingenious spies or I hire some crackers to break into her company’s internal employee database servers to get another way to contact her. It would have taken a Bollywood hero to do all that.

I’m no Bollywood hero but this classic Bollywood song reminded me that I’m not alone in this tenacious odyssey. While I was listening to this song on radio one day, I was lost in thoughts and soliloquy while browsing through my previous chat history with her, which was last seen by her ages ago. So as the hymns of the song emanated, they resonated with my thoughts. “Pyaar hame kis mod pe le aaya” was the most fitting testament to what has actually happened as a result of this wacky phenomenon of getting clean bowled even before coming out to bat on the field. And the remaining lines blended with my situation in a way that was so baffling that I could not resist downloading the song immediately and then playing in loop enough times before I felt manumitted.

I felt an unusual and intractable kind of replenishment which seeped through my thoughts. I knew that this phenomenon is not as anomalous as I first thought. It’s ubiquitous indeed. Tangy it may seem at first but there is no question about its veracity. The song so adeptly represented a situation from the lives of common men that you had to be a common man in that abstruse situation to realize the worth of the wisdom exuding from every line of that song. I developed a genuine admiration for not this song but all songs of that era and started listening to a few more of them that revolved around a similar situation. Barring a few, most of them described a mix of what I’m going through exactly. One may ask the purpose or the utility of resorting to these songs for solace. Well, it’s better to strive as a team than to fight as an individual. I now know for sure that I’m not alone, that there are countless other souls freaking out on battles of similar nature, frenzing out on a wry future. As a human being, I cannot leave the ground for I shall have to stay here, affirming my own stand, for when the time arrives, it’s time to make the next move. “Pyaar hame kis mod pe le aaya” ?